LAUGEL'S PROBLEMS OF NATURE AND LIFE. 359 



and often do, produce modifications of the natural in- 

 stincts, and render them hereditary in the race or 

 species. But the fact still remains that there are 

 numerous and extraordinary instincts which can in no- 

 wise be interpreted by organisation, though this is 

 used for their fulfilment. The structural peculiarities 

 of certain birds and fishes are necessary for their 

 periodical migrations by land and sea. But the act of 

 migration itself is the marvel ; determinate as to place, 

 time, and method guided by no sense or reason we 

 can define or conceive, yet fulfilling purposes .with a 

 certitude no reason could attain. Instincts prospective 

 in their nature, as we admire them in the nests of birds 

 the sexual instincts and those cpnnected with food, 

 appetencies essential to life on the earth the instincts 

 of the bee-hive and ant-hill, which sacrifice the inte- 

 rests of the individual creature to those of the com- 

 munity these and endless others come under the 

 same head, as acts not due to reason nor to any 

 apparent structure. 



We are still, then, confronted by the profound pro- 

 blem of a power acting in and through the complex 

 fabric of animal life, of which neither our senses nor 

 reason can render any account. In connecting it with 

 the larger problem of the generation of life from life, 

 we suggest an absolute and necessary relation, but do 

 not solve the mystery. Science is zealously working 

 in this direction, but, as we believe, with an insuper- 

 able barrier at some point in its progress. We have 

 spoken of a border-land between reason and instinct, 

 where these two faculties variously and curiously com- 



